Competition, it’s everywhere, its in your schools. It finds ways into your friendships and it is most definitely in your athletics. Competition can be a good and bad depending on how you take it. Competition could drive you to do your best or it could push you to meet a specific goal. It also can be a bad thing like if you are so competitive that you start to cheat to win or even hurt your opponent just so you can beat them, that’s when it starts to get out of hand. I know sometimes I start to take competition the wrong way, like sometimes I’ll look at my opponent and try to be like them or perform as well as them instead of focusing on myself and how I can improve my own abilities.  Sometimes I start to compare myself to them and if I’m not as good as them in almost every physical aspect, then I will sit there and only focus on that while they are probably only worried about getting themselves better.

I know a lot of times during football I would start to compare myself to other players. There was one game we lost this year against NLS. I looked at them coming onto their field and noticed how much bigger they were then our team and how fast they were so during our warm ups I spent a lot of the time just watching them and asking myself if I can be as fast as them instead of actually getting prepared for the game. So when the game came around It kinda hit me like a truck because I wasn’t prepared and ready to face a team of that size because the whole warmup instead of getting ready I was staring at them.  So it took me almost half way through the game to actually get focused and by then they were already up by too much for us to make comeback. If I would have just focused on myself and used the competition I had to push myself to get more prepared and ready I could have maybe played better and our team could have won that game. For the rest of that year instead of comparing myself to others or trying to get a head start to beat someone so it looked like I was faster, I started to use other team mates and motivation to drive myself to my goals.  I focused on getting myself faster and bigger. I started to focus on how big I was at the time instead of how much bigger others are then me and feeling bad because I am not like them.